Gibbs: Jack Welch 'embarrassed himself'

10/7/12 10:52 AM EDT

"It's incredibly dangerous," Gibbs said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "The notion, quite frankly, that somebody as well respected as Jack Welch would go on television and single-handedly embarrass himself for the entire day of Friday by saying someone that these statistics are made up."

"We wonder why institutions in this country — the perceptions of institutions — are failing: because people go on TV and make stuff up," Gibbs said.

"There's a number of people that believe the real unemployment report is somewhere in a safe in Nairobi with the president's Kenyan birth certificate," Gibbs said.